ctions, and for a
long time he could not really make them out.

Finally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one.

Non was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world,
they said, they would have heard about it before.

* * * * *

When I was telling ex-Mayor ----, in ----, about Non, the first time, he
interrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for his
stenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly or
indirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news in
writing.

Of course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but he
wanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its being
true would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up.

Now ex-Mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows)
who, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be,
would have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the same
difficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives and
getting what he wants.

But the moment ex-Mayor ---- found these same motives put up to be
believed in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they were
too good to be true.

I have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of
observation with a very singular and interesting fact about business
men.

Nine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a rather
bluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or the
other) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as a
rule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by trying
to keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the stern
scuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how
high their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keep
other people from suspecting it.

In ----'s factory in ----, the workers in brass, a few years ago, could
not be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass
filings. When ---- installed, at great expense, suction machines to
place beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said,
"Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?"

"Not at all."

The saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men's
mouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he had
gone to the expens